Win droughts have been a regular occurrence over the last two–and-a-bit seasons for Hereford FC, but game droughts are a new phenomenon. With no match since the schoolyard-style 3-3 draw with Kettering as a result of Covid-related postponements against Telford and Darlington, the Bulls finally get the chance to get things back on track as they travel to the Deva Stadium to face Chester FC on Tuesday evening, kick-off 7:45pm.
Possibly due to the lottery of whether games will go ahead or not as scheduled, it seems increasingly to be the case that anyone can beat anyone else in this division. Kettering and Chorley are now picking up, Gloucester seem to have drawn the shutters down on their season already, and Blyth are unusual in showing some consistency, even if it’s not the right sort if you’re a Spartan. Curzon Ashton and Alfreton have racked up loads of games but not loads of points, and like Blyth are reliably bad, and Fylde (Hereford’s opponents on Saturday) and York look like the favourites they were at the start of the season. Otherwise anything can seemingly happen, and it’s a division ripe to be scaled at pace for those clubs who have barely played any games - clubs like Hereford FC.
Chester were as good at home last season as King's Lynn, who went up, and this season are again looking strong on their own patch, winning three out of four at the Deva. They’re currently in tenth position, just a point shy of the play-off positions. Last season this fixture was, frankly, something of an embarrassment. Chester won it 4-1 but they could have had eight. The away side offered little resistance to the onslaught led by Joel Taylor and Akwasi Asante that day. However, Asante departed for Gloucester in the summer before recently following his manager to Chesterfield, and Taylor missed Saturday’s trip to York as rumours abound that he too is imminently off to the Spireites. What is it with Derbyshire? Is it virus-free or something?
That defeat came at a time when the Harris/Richards experiment was thankfully gasping its last breaths, and morale would have been understandably low. The Bulls will surely travel to Cheshire in much higher spirits this time.
Having got that gloomy bit out of the way (not the bit about being in high spirits, that’s all good – the stuff beforehand about last season), here’s the good news: the hosts have only won one of their last six, have only kept one clean sheet all season, and are fallible at set pieces. They lost narrowly to York at Bootham Crescent on Saturday, although of course they won’t be the last club to lose there this season.
Daniel Elliott has five goals to his name so far, but he takes longer to score his goals than The Shop, by which I mean in terms of minutes per game rather than the actual process of getting the ball into the net, which would be a daft thing to measure.
No away fans allowed for this one of course. A variety of Covid-related government diktats across the Deva’s footprint will no doubt contradict each other depending on whether you’re in Wales or England at any given time, so it’s going to be virtually impossible to avoid accidental law breaking unless you wear a hazmat suit. Just as well then, really, that the ban on travelling supporters is still in place for the time being.
This recent game drought could actually prove to be advantageous, in that a rebooted ‘Season 2.0’ can start here, and injuries will have had time to heal. This new squad has now had long enough to gel without having had to burn through too many actual matches in doing so, and losing them as a result. Some solid defending here would be welcome, and a full-strength squad should have enough quality to cause the hosts problems at the other end, but chances created need to be finished off, to state the bleedin’ obvious.
COYW